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The Parable of the G-20: Blind to the Elephant

The Parable of the G-20: Blind to the Elephant

by

Devinder Sharma

The leaders of the G-20 Group of countries who met in
Washington DC for an emergency meeting to revamp the global financial landscape
can be compared to a parable in the Hindu ‘Panchantra'. Like the six blind men who failed to see the
elephant, they grappled in bright light for six hours and yet failed to frame
an action plan that could truly stimulate the global economy.

The elephant in this case is the parasitical global
financial system. It has thrived all these years on the hungry stomach of
starving millions, extracting every last available ounce of blood. Untamed and
unregulated, it demolished the borders of the nation-state to emerge unfettered
and free -- unrestrained by governments, and liberated from society's control.
In the process, speculative and mobile financial capital has played havoc with
the global economy. The elephant has been on a rampage.

Instead of placing a wreath on the tottering financial
system and acknowledging that the free market cannot survive without a
massive life-saving blood transfusion from governments the world over, the
blind leadership has worked out a 16-week roadmap to tackle the global crisis.
What appears to be a concerted plan to pave the way "for reforms to help
ensure a similar crisis does not happen again," is in reality a recipe for
yet another bubble ready to burst.

The economic policies that remain in vogue will
continue to impoverish workers, promote jobless growth, push developing country
farmers out of agriculture, mine natural resources (and render the commons
barren in the process), and allow corporate control over farming while
aggressively pushing for one-way trade -- from the rich to the developing
countries, adding to global warming and thereby driving the world towards an
unforeseen ecological crisis. In providing enormous bail-outs to banks, the
international leadership has not only acknowledged but applauded the role
played by financial robbers and business pirates.

Isn't this a
sad travesty of the truth? If you rob a bank of a few thousand dollars, you are
inevitably arrested and sent to prison. If you rob the entire international banking
system, you not only receive a pat on the back but also a handsome retirement
package. If you are personally unable to pay your debts to the banks, you are hauled
before the courts and have both your movable and immovable property
confiscated. But if the bank is unable to pay its debts, it is bailed out with catastrophic
urgency. If you fail to pay your insurance premium, your policy is terminated.
But if the insurance company falters, it is nationalised by the government while
the CEO is relieved of his job with a multi-million dollar severance package.

The proposals
of the G-20's 16-week ‘action plan' -- boosting standards of credit rating
agencies, addressing weaknesses in accounting and disclosure standards, and
setting up a risk warning system for banks -- are a whitewash. Yet we couldn't
have expected anything better from a blind leadership that has merrily
facilitated the commodification of the Earth's limited natural resources in the
name of trade, and outsourced countless thousands of jobs in the name of
competitiveness. Whether it is free
trade or global warming, this entire stratagem is supposedly enacted for the
benefit of developing countries -- and all in the name of eradicating poverty
and ending hunger. Such benevolence!

The memory of
the world public is very short. We have forgotten that the last time Europe
came to the ‘rescue' of Africa, the whole continent was colonised. When the East
India Company began to trade in India, the entire sub-continent was colonised
for 200 years. When the British finally left, the fourth largest economy was
left pauperised and hungry. In the last 30 years (including 13 years of the World
Trade Organisation), 105 of the 149 developing have already become food
importing economies. If the Doha Development Round is successfully completed, the
likelihood is that these few remaining developing countries will be turned into
food dumps for surplus produce from the West.

No wonder that the
blind leadership is in a tearing hurry to push through further trade
agreements. Here is an incident you
probably missed; just prior to the Washington conclave, Brazil's Finance
Minister Guido Mantega hosted a meeting for central bank presidents and finance
ministers from G-20 countries. "We have to change the tires of the car with the
car moving," he said. "This means that in 60 to 90 days we will need the
solutions for new financial regulations." Mantega and his colleagues need to be informed
that changing tires with the car moving is a prerogative of James Bond, requiring
either the aptitude of 007 or the imaginative skills of Ian Fleming.

Much has already
been written, analysed and spoken about the present crisis. Although not an
economist, I firmly believe that neo-economic thinking is the primary cause for all
the misdemeanours currently being played out on the world stage and wreaking
havoc throughout the globe -- as witnessed in the financial crisis, food crisis,
energy crisis, climate crisis, and the increasing crisis of international terrorism.
If this is the garden path where modern economics has led us, isn't it time to call
out the elephant? It may well be politically incorrect to stand up against the
might of the faulty economic system, but isn't it time to call a spade a spade?
Why wait for doomsday or Armageddon?

A retort I often
receive is ‘where is the alternative?' The question is asked because, in our
myopic economic thinking, everything is measured in terms of ‘growth' and ‘profit
targets', but we are never taught to calculate happiness and contentment or
told that food, human genes and nature is not a commodity to be sold on the
marketplace. We have never been taught,
in other words, that it is sustainable ethics that leads to sustainable
development. We have been too busy partying, and the hangover is too strong for
us all to see the silver lining.

Before we
discuss alternatives, allow me to draw your attention to another sinister
design. The financial crisis is now leading us to a more terrible food crisis in
the near future. The recent surge in food prices, accompanied by food riots in
37 countries in the beginning of this year, was a mere tip of the iceberg.
After destabilising the global economic structure, the financial forces are
moving into agricultural markets. Speculation in commodities trading is now widely
acknowledged to be the major cause behind the food price crisis. But what
happens when the hedge funds and the bailout packages are used by insurance
companies, banks and investment firms to purchase farm lands across the globe?

Goldman Sachs
and Deutsche Bank are eyeing a takeover of China's livestock industry. Morgan
Stanley has purchased 40,000 hectares in Ukraine. Landkom, the British
investment group, has also bought 100,000 hectares of land in Ukraine. The two
Swedish investing firms, Black Earth Farming and Alpcot-Agro, have purchased
331,000 hectares and 128,000 hectares of farm land in Russia,
respectively. Along with these investment firms, the governments have joined in
the mad race to purchase land in Asia and Africa to grow food to be exported back
home (see my article: Land
Grab for Food Security: Corporatising Agriculture).

What happens
when the food bubble bursts? Who will bail out the hungry?

Returning back
to the ‘TINA factor' (the assumption that ‘There Is No Alternative' to economic
globalisation), there is in fact a very plausible alternative. The solution lies
in the principle of self-reliance that Mahatma Gandhi advocated so many years
ago. It is time to revisit Gandhi and dig out his vision for a sustainable world;
where production by the masses is not
replaced by production for the masses;
where food security does not mean importing cheaper food; where every hand is
provided a decent job; and where growth does not translate into profits, but happiness. A vision in which the earth
has enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed. Such a world is surely
possible. All it requires is for us to stand up, throw away the blind covers, and
be counted.

Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst.
He is a regular contributor to STWR and can be reached at hunger55@gmail.com

Further

In the vile wake of Charlottesville - those sweaty young white men, pasty faces contorted, screaming, "Blood and Soil!" "Jews Will Not Replace Us!" "Fuck You Faggots!" - what to say? Just this: This is racism, domestic terrorism, pure hate. This is not who we are, and this is not ok. Most vital, those "whose pigmentation matches theirs" must speak "with unflinching clarity (or) we simply amen it... They need white faces speaking directly into their white faces, loudly on behalf of love."

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